A Quarter-Life Situation

A colleague of mine is turning 25 next month. I teased her about it the other day to hype up her imminent milestone. Instead of submitting herself to the birthday exposure, she responded with this rather serious question, "In this age, have you ever looked back and regretted the things you haven't been able to achieve?" She quickly added, “I’m a bit stressed every time I remember the failure list.”

Well, it suffices to say that the confession took me off guard. "I have no list. I have no goals. I'm just going with the flow,” I said. While it was more of a spur-in-the-moment answer, I was stunned by the undeniable honesty. Do I really have no goals in life? Should there be a list of things I aim to achieve before I turn 30?

I mean, obviously, I have wishes (and the idea of a genie lamp hidden in the attic sounds marvelous to me). I wish for everything to be good. I wish I could travel the world with my family. I wish for more exciting experiences in the future. I wish this blog would garner more audiences and become a positive online community. I wish and I wish and I wish…

Is it bad if I don’t set a target for a certain extravagance by the time I reach a certain number though? In my opinion, there is no point in driving oneself crazy over a specific grandeur. If I’m all for celebrating everything that has been accomplished instead, does that mean I lack motivation, thus making me a procrastinator?

In my defense, I’m not trying to sabotage my chance—I consider it important not to waste my potential by honing what I do best. And I think I’m quite far from being lazy either—if anything, I’m a perfectionist who takes a great deal of pride in giving my best. My life might not be perfect—there are so many things I still have yet to achieve—but I feel like I have reached this point where I just want to be grateful. I value all the blood, sweat, and tears I have shed to become who I am today, I romanticize even the smallest things, and I actively search for something productive to do in my spare time. There is this liberating feeling in the air once I have started being grateful about my whereabouts.

Well, you will perhaps wonder: does that mean being grateful stops me from having a goal? Or does being grateful stop me from being too hard on myself even when I haven't been able to reach it? I have wishes. I have desires. I just don't set a deadline, so the latter one it is.

When all is said and done, I wonder if it’s still so bad to have nothing in particular binding you to a straight path. If I retain this freedom to explore every intersection in the street, stopping for a cup of ice cream or two, do you think it is okay if I don’t set a target to buy that big house around the corner by the time I turn 30?